Controlling delivery

An ordinary auction campaign in CityScreen Context delivers whenever it wins an opportunity. Its budget, frequency and pacing are controlled on the buy side, by the demand-side platform that bids for it, and the operator controls where and at what price it can win.

This page is for anyone who has to answer an advertiser or an agency asking how their spend will be controlled, and for integrators who need to know where that responsibility sits.

What is checked on every opportunity

For an ordinary campaign the checks are:

The creative the demand partner offered resolves to one of that partner’s campaigns in this organization.
The campaign’s state allows it to be shown. Rejected and inactive campaigns are never shown — see Campaign states.
The current moment falls inside the campaign’s flight window, if the partner supplied one.
This face passes the campaign’s whitelist or blacklist.
An advertisement exists whose resolution and aspect ratio suit this face and whose length fits the slot, under whatever strictness the covering price list imposes.
The covering price list prices this creative length.
Where the content management system named specific campaigns in its request, this campaign is one of them.
The bid is present, above zero, and at or above the floor price.

Every one of those is a question about the opportunity at hand, so a campaign that satisfies them delivers on each slot where it wins.

What stops a campaign

The demand partner stops bidding: This is the budget control, and it lives on the buy side. A demand-side platform tracks its own advertiser budgets and declines to bid once one is exhausted.
The flight window closes: If the demand partner supplied a start and end time with the creative, the campaign stops being offered after the end time. The demand partner supplies the window; the operator does not set it.
An employee declines the campaign: Immediate and not reversible, and the reason goes back to the buyer. See Declining a campaign.
Housekeeping retires it: After a long silence the campaign is paused, and after a longer one it is stopped. See Campaign states.

When an advertiser needs spend on an ordinary auction campaign to stop at a number, that number is enforced by the demand-side platform, or the buy is a different kind of buy.

What to reach for

Three product paths give the operator control, each of a different kind.

Programmatic guaranteed campaigns: The buyer agrees a budget and a number of plays per hour per face in advance, and pays for it up front. The platform counts the reserved plays down one at a time, and delivery ends when they are used up; the money itself was recorded once, at activation. See Programmatic guaranteed campaigns.
Automated guaranteed campaigns: The buyer books a volume, an employee reserves it against a capacity check, and the content management system delivers it on a schedule. Delivery is bounded by the booking. See Automated guaranteed campaigns.
Floor prices and price lists: Raising a floor price on a face makes it uneconomic for a partner to keep winning it; removing a partner from a price list takes it out of that face’s auction altogether. Both apply to every campaign from that partner. See Price lists and Bid floors.

For a single campaign that is running somewhere you do not want it, retargeting is usually the right lever before declining: move the face onto a blacklist and the campaign stops winning there while continuing everywhere else.